The old LEF is down again

[mike90045]

I made a site capture of it - maybe about a year ago, and mailed off a couple of DVD's.  the spider program took several days to crawl the site, and made a convoluted backup, you had to mount as drive R: ( what ever it was archived on my system as ).  I'll look for the HDD, and mount it up, and find the date I archived, and can burn a disk for someone.  But I've archived nothing after this forum (cogen) came online. (thanks oh wonderful host).

Mike

[XYZER]

I have many apprehensions of this here ol digital world. All can be lost in the blink of an eye! I can remember the day I discovered the LEF site after buying a 6/1 for $700.00 some 5-6? years ago and thinking I hit the mother lode! I spent many an hour.....understatement. DAYS reading, posting, arguing, and learning about many things of gear head type interest.....We all invested time into the site and it is a shame that all of that information is ....maybe lost! I see no point whatsoever in why all that information should be just thrown away because the owner just doesn't care...sure it is his but that is (sort of) like throwing the last copy in the world of the Machinist handbook or Marks' standard handbook away because the owner was tired of it getting in the way. I put them in the book burner category.....I hate to see it happen! Which raises the question what will keep this site alive forever for future gearheads...or at least a long long time?
Dave     

[T19]

There is a backup, the owner was in contact with me today, server crash it appears.  Working on a plan to save the knowledge, more to follow

[XYZER]

There is a backup, the owner was in contact with me today, server crash it appears.  Working on a plan to save the knowledge, more to follow

Good to hear! And thanks to everyone that keeps all of the sites going!

[Horsepoor]

Although I raely post, I've spent significant time (days) reading and re-reading posts on the old LEF as well as this forum. To Troy or others, I've got at least $20 toward server fees or other maintenance costs, plus more if needed. I'd consider this a reasonable user fee since I've had access to so much information over the years which has supported a neat hobby. I guess what I am suggesting is a type of membership fee to off set costs of hosting the old LEF forum on a better server.  

[mobile_bob]

my attitude toward this forum comes down to this

the content belongs to everyone that posts here, and i look at my position as being no more than
the custodian of this information.

this place would be nothing without the work and contributions of the membership, and it will continue on
for as long as there is any interest or as long as it is legal to be so.

(who knows what the future holds with government regulations)

we have at least two backups of this forum going on, AdeV does his best to keep up and i do one at least once a week.
having said that i think i will step up and do one at least a couple times a week, and maybe daily if the traffic stays at this level
or increases.

we are currently paid up with our hosting company, and the cost annually is quite reasonable and has been paid for by SOMRAD
membership thus far.

we are still relatively young as far as forum's go, while we have a few things left to cleanup and rework, we obviously are doing something right.

there is no reason for anyone to get concerned about the longevity of this forum.

i suspect at some point in the near future to have much more time to devote to the development, support and promotion of our forum.

this place is something i am quite passionate about, and i see all of you guys as part of a bigger family, even if we don't always see things
"eye to eye".

we are working on some interesting stuff that will improve our forum and there will likely be some minor changes made over the next few weeks to accommodate those changes.

thank you all

bob g

[AdeV]

Bob - I found a program called "SMF Backup" which runs the forum backup on an automatic schedule.... I currently have it set to once every 4 hours  so we have plenty of BUs... I keep one per day, so if we do have an issue which goes back some way, I should still be able to handle it.

Do keep taking your backups though - there's no such thing as too many backups...

[cgwymp]

There is a backup, the owner was in contact with me today, server crash it appears.  Working on a plan to save the knowledge, more to follow

You say that Troy is not self-hosting, so I assume he's using a commercial hosting company? For as many times as his host's server crashes, I hope he's at least considering moving to a different host!

[XYZER]

.....just thinking here...lookout!... I have no clue and how or if it is possible but can a CD/DVD be made of a site be made that could be used sort of like online.... with pictures? So many off grid guys might not have dependable online access and could use a site on CD/DVD to pass the time. I have no idea how much data space this site requires or how many DVD's it would require. They could be sold to help support the upkeep plus spread the knowledge out there for future gearhead/hobbiest. The Utterpower CD sort of did that and for a starter Listeroid guy it is a handy tool for his toolbox. One could buy an update when he felt it was time. Just a what if.........

[mobile_bob]

there are some things happening in the background as i type this, it looks like there will be some sort of continuation
of the LEF, in some form.

the info should remain intact, we just have to wait and see what comes out of the discussions

patience my fellow members, patience



bob g

[contaucreek]

Well I for one can't wait to see LEF back up and buzzing with 3 new posts every month 

[T19]

Well I for one can't wait to see LEF back up and buzzing with 3 new posts every month 

Well  if you would have checked the forums other that the SWAP Market you would have seen some posts

[contaucreek]

Hey don't judge, I'm into swapping 

[mobile_bob]

i don't want to kick them when they are down, it seems every time i do something bad happens

remember when this forum went down for a day or so, back in the early days, it was because some bot
was hammering the hell out of another forum on the same server that hosts our forum so the company just
shut down the server and waited for the bot to give up and move on, then rebooted and all has been well since.

other than a few times a year when it shuts down for maintenance in the middle of the night, we have had
really good luck with the hosting company.

for no more than it cost to have a hosting company do the deal annually, i can't imagine trying to save a few bucks
and have all the grief with worrying about hardware in my basement. 

sometimes its just best to let those that do it professionally do it, and direct ones attention to things he is best at.

most especially when a forum gets to several hundred members and tens of thousands of posts, at some point there
is too much at risk to try and do it all yourself.

it gets to the point that "my dog ate my homework" just doesn't fly anymore.

bob g

[BioHazard]

At the very least, no matter how it's hosted, they could EASILY put up a quick/simple HTML page saying why they are down, and when, if ever, they might be back. There really is no excuse not to do something like that.